The first thing I had to do was sort out what hardware I needed in order to do any development. I also have a friend who has helped coach me with getting started with this device and otherwise filling in my cavernous gaps when it comes to electronics. I am not deluded into thinking it won’t take weeks or months to make significant progress. And at least for me, this is a hobby I have a day job, family, and assorted other responsibilities that take priority.

If you’re like me, it takes reading and re-reading (or viewing and re-viewing) for things to sink in. There are great forums and YouTube videos you can follow, as well.

While you can download the book for free, I would urge anyone to pay something towards Neil’s hard work. Neil does a really good job of explaining the fundamentals of ESP8266 development (albeit somewhat biased towards Eclipse development), and I look forward to subsequent editions, as he publishes them. One of sources of information I have found useful is Neil Koblan’s book on the ESP8266. DISCLAIMER: I am not an electrical engineer, and the steps I outline are not warranted for any fitness of purpose. Update! Since writing this post, I have made some updates to my hardware and software. When writing, it’s a fine line to divide, but hopefully it will be useful for someone who has started out like I did, basically from ground zero, but who maybe has some experience writing software and can otherwise follow simple instructions. Other parts might presume knowledge of how networking and computers work, in general. I am trying to write them from the perspective of pretty much an complete n00b, so some parts of these posts might be entirely obvious to some readers. So I’ve started this series of posts to describe my experience getting started with ESP8266 development on the Mac. I have a few linux boxes I play around with, mostly VM images, but I wanted to do some development directly on the Macintosh.

The fact that you can pick up one of these things on AliExpress for $1.80 is pretty cool, too.Īs a professional software developer, however, I don’t have any real experience with hardware, and only minimal experience with operating systems and interfaces with hardware. Even when running, the device can be powered off coin cell batteries, so it fits the bill, on the low-power check box. And in deep sleep, the thing draws something like 7 microamps. It is a fully programmable SoC (albeit with limited programming options), and includes a full 802.11 wireless networking stack. I really like the idea of low-cost and low-power devices, and with its built-in support for WIFI networking, the ESP8266 seems like a really compelling platform for experimenting with these kinds of device. I recently got interested in embedded development and trendy “IoT” applications.

Esp8266 nodemcu eclipse development